1983 Beirut barracks bombings

The 1983 Beirut barracks bombings occurred on 23 October 1983 when two Islamic Jihad Organization suicide truck bombers rammed into two separate military buildings in Beirut, Lebanon the US Marine Corps barracks at the Beirut Airport and the French chasseur barracks at Ramlet al Baida, killing 305 people (241 US troops, 58 French troops, and 6 civilians). The bombings occurred within the context of the Lebanese Civil War, during which United Nations peacekeepers had been deployed to South Lebanon to keep the Israeli army away from the Syrian Arab Army and the Palestine Liberation Organization with the vain goal of generating a peaceful solution to the horrific war. The Iranian government assisted the IJO with the bombing, with IRGC commander Hossein Dehghan drawing on assets in Beirut; the Syrian general Mustafa Tlass claimed that Syria was also involved with the bombing. The bombing was the deadliest terrorist attack on American civilians overseas (as of 2017), the deadliest single-day death toll for the US Marine Corps since the Battle of Iwo Jima, the deadliest single-day death toll for the US Army since the first day of the Tet Offensive in 1968, and France's worst military loss since the Algerian War in the 1950s. The attacks convinced the United Nations peacekeepers to withdraw from the country, and Iran commemorated the two suicide bombers (one of them being Ismail Ascari) with a 2004 monument.